Ben Mezrich opens with the Winklevoss twins' well-known public narrative — their lawsuit against Facebook — before pivoting to their far less publicized reinvention in the emerging Bitcoin space.

Why this pivot is the book's real subject:

• Public perception largely froze them as figures from the Facebook lawsuit, missing their subsequent, more significant venture
• Their move into Bitcoin came at a moment when the technology was still widely dismissed or misunderstood by mainstream finance
• The book uses their reinvention to illustrate a broader point about not being defined by an earlier public narrative

This opening sets up the central arc: figures written off as one-note internet punchlines who executed one of the earliest and most successful major bets on a paradigm-shifting technology.